by Neil Clarke
“You stay here, today, Li,” he says in that startling voice. “I need you.”
Li looks down at his baskets.
“I must sell fish.”
Pepper holds out a fistful of yuan. It covers a week of fish selling, and Li looks greedily down at it.
Pepper hands the yuan to Li.
“You need not sell fish today. Buy breakfast for us, something with lots of meat. I need the protein. But not fish.” Pepper smiles a perfect set of teeth. “I have an errand for you to run. It is very important.” He has the disk Li rescued earlier in his hand.
“What is it you need, Pepper?”
With the thick fold of cash in his hands, under the watchful eye of Mei, Pepper has Li’s full attention.
Pepper tells Li to first go straight down past the Wharf into town, to David Tsung.
With the wad of yuan in his pocket Li decides to first detour down a street lined with food stalls.
He stops in front of a small cart on wheels.
‘Wok on wheels’ emblazons the side of the cart, in both English and Chinese characters.
Li is not as interested in deciphering the unfamiliar English symbols; the scent of meat frying on oiled metal draws him in. He realizes his mouth is full of saliva. He hands over yuan for a small dish, greedily scooping meat and sauce into his mouth, relishing the taste of meat.
“Xie xie,” he says, but the cook has already turned away from him to toss more strips into the wok to sizzle and dance.
Li watches the cook tease ingredients into the mixture for several seconds as he finishes his meal, then tosses the paper dish at a gutter and continues on.
David Tsung is an old man from Canton. He sells computers. Or at least, Li thinks so, as the windows of the small store show computers in fading old pictures. As Li steps in a bell dings. He closes his eyes to muster courage, and wishes he had never picked up the tiny disk. Even despite the promise of Pepper’s yuan, Li is scared.
“What do you want?” A sharp voice from behind the counter.
“Ni hao. I am here to buy a laptop, and a cellular modem.”
David Tsung looks Li up and down slowly, squinting eyes scrutinizing the shabby clothes, dirty hands. The smell of fish has entered the store with Li. Li self-consciously rubs his hands against his trousers to try cleaning them.
Tsung abruptly cackles laughter.
“You have won the lottery, then?”
Li shakes his head.
“What money do you have?” Tsung asks. Li pulls the black info-disk out and sets it on the counter in front of Tsung.
“Pepper says you should know what to do with this.”
David Tsung jumps slightly at the mention of the name ‘Pepper.’
“Shi. But I told him I would think about it, I never have promised anything. It is dangerous.”
Tsung thoughtfully picks the disk up, then drops it and swears. Li sees Tsung’s finger drop a bead of blood, and assumes that Tsung is also now poisoned. Li is having trouble staying calm. His heart is running away from him, and nervous sweat beads his brow. The threat of death through poison is an ancient bargaining chip, Li knows. It is all that Pepper has armed him with. He hopes it is enough to force the old man to do Pepper’s will.
But Pepper’s words are in his head, walking him through. Li can still feel the pleasurable press of the yuan in his pocket against the side of his leg, and the beef in his stomach, so he speaks up.
“Pepper says not to be alarmed. The infection will take a day to develop. Only Pepper knows the antidote.”
Tsung’s voice rises in pitch as he continues swearing, but he looks scared.
“Pepper wants a laptop with cellular modem,” Li repeats. “And he wants you to make safety copies of this info-disk.” As Tsung steps back from the counter Li sees the shotgun strapped to his forearm, and his heart quickens.
I’m going to die, he thinks. The poison isn’t enough of a threat. Maybe Tsung is going to kill me. Does he think I carry the antidote with me?
But Tsung beckons for Li to come through into the back with him.
“You Pepper’s messenger, eh? How is Pepper. He okay?”
Li nods.
“Good. I’m glad.” Li follows Tsung through the door, and they stand in a room filled with computers of all ages in various states of disassembly. Tsung hunts through several drawers before he pulls out a small laptop. “Here, here,” he says. Li accepts the small notebook and stands waiting.
Tsung plugs the disk into another computer. He fiddles around with something on a screen, then smacks his lips as the drive begins whirring.
“I will make copies.”
Li nods. Even if Tsung weren’t, how would he know otherwise? So he stands and waits for the old man to finish and hand him the original plus a copy.
“The antidote?” Tsung asked.
“Pepper says it is in the mail for you. It will arrive in time.”
The little old tech-man seems to deflate even further into himself. He holds up another disk in his clawed hands.
“You tell Pepper I have copies. I will send them out if I don’t get an antidote. You understand. Tell him.”
Li nods.
“You make sure you tell him to send me antidote.”
On his way back Li stops at the ‘wok on wheels’ and orders several dishes of Iron Plate Beef. Rice will be waiting at home. The cook remembers him and smiles as he hands Li the covered paper dishes all in a bag with the logo emblazoned on the side.
He splashes through the early morning with a faint smile. The sweet aroma of stir fried beef mixed with kuomo mushrooms and bamboo shoots reaches his nose.
“Wo ai ni,” Mei says the second he steps through the door. She hugs him fiercely, and he kisses her back.
“I love you too.”
Pepper waits for the exchange to finish before he steps forward.
“Did you get everything?”
Li unshoulders the strap of the laptop case and hands it over. Pepper unzips it and sets in on the small table in the corner.
“I bet Tsung was pissed.”
Li nods.
“He swore much.” He catches Mei’s glance out of the corner of his eye. She is looking at the bag in his hand. He gives it to her.
Mei breezes out of the kitchen with a paper dish into their sleeping room. Li knows she doesn’t want to be seen greedily bolting the food down. He respects that. He can still taste the aroma on the edge of his tongue. He desires more. Instead he crosses his legs and sits with Pepper.
Pepper’s bulk dwarfs him.
“You risked my life for this, what is it?” Li asks.
Pepper looks up at him and makes a sucking sound with his teeth.
“Man,” he says in English, “you risked your own life, for the money I gave you.” He smiles perfect white teeth again. “But I shouldn’t be hard on you. Na.” Li notices the strange lilt still in Pepper’s English. “It is a great secret.”
“Some secrets are better kept secret.”
“Not this one.” Pepper boots up the small laptop, and it makes squealing noises as it dials into an invisible network. “This secret is exactly the kind that shouldn’t be kept.”
“Tell me.”
“You read much, Li? Do you read the newspapers you wrap your fish in?” Pepper looks up and around. “A few months ago satellites around the world received a message from somewhere outside of the solar system. Then it stopped. No one could decipher it, it didn’t make any sense, but it was definitely artificial.” Pepper’s yellowed nails are dancing across the small keyboard.
Li waits as he plugs the disk into the laptop.
“Of course, everyone is curious. What sent it? Will there be more messages? That’s what I am here for. My superiors tell me to keep my eyes open and ears to the ground.” The English adage is unfamiliar to Li, but he guesses the meaning.
“You found things.”
“Observatories on each major landmass across the world are receiving similar messages
now.” Pepper shifts on the seat and reaches for a dish of beef. He keeps talking through a full mouth. “North and South America, Africa, Europe, Australia . . . but Chinese officials denied they had any message. It took two weeks to find this damn version of the message, I got it through a scientist working at a deep-space observatory in Canton. And the message he received is different from all the others. The Chinese clocks show that this message is received first, and only in China. And the intervals in between the message are getting smaller. The other signals are merely repetitions to make sure the rest of the world is blanketed.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Hao-Chang. Whatever it is, it will come here.”
Pepper unplugs the case and slips it deep into the folds of his duster.
“Now, everyone in the Western Hemisphere has a copy of the Chinese message. Everyone is in on the great secret.” The modem is quiet, the screen asks the user if they would like to send another message. “And there it is. For what it’s worth. Now maybe foreigners will quit harassing me.”
Mei comes back into the room, discreetly wiping at her chin. Li unconsciously moves closer to her.
Before he reaches her there is a polite knock on the door.
Li knows that he has no neighbors here, and he knows Mei has no family anywhere near the Wharf. The fact trickles down through his mind with a cold shiver. Pepper looks up from the paper dish and puts it to his side. He reaches deep into the duster.
The knock comes again.
Only this time the door is flung aside and a dim figure is in the room. Pepper rolls and fires something loud through his duster. Instinctively Li closes his eyes against the noise. He drops to the ground, and stays still.
He hears more clatter, the sounds ringing in his ears. His heart thumps loud, and he prays for life.
Mei gasps and falls near him. As Li looks down at his hands he sees blood, Pepper and the assailant are gone, chasing each other through the maze of small huts and apartments.
“Mei,” he whispers. The only response is a short gasp, Li can hardly hear it. He gets to his knees and bends over his wife.
“Mei.”
He sees her reaching for air, but not getting any. Instead of exhaling she coughs up blood. It runs down her cheek and onto the dirt floor. Li cannot find words; he starts to gather her up in his arms, but she coughs again, the action racking her small body. He holds her there, in his arms, just above the dirt floor.
Her eyes are glazed, wandering around the room unfocused. Li puts his face before her. For a brief second her eyes seem to focus on him, then they are looking past him, and he can no longer feel the slight flutter of her heart.
“Mei.”
Li allows her body to gently slip back onto the dirt floor. He weeps, his tears mixing with the stale rainwater dripping in through the bullet-holes in the roof.
He barely notices the gun battle outside cease, or Pepper silently returning. Pepper stands at the door for a minute, then carefully crawls into a corner.
Li stays kneeled over the body of his wife for several hours.
Pepper shakes Li’s shoulder early in the morning. Pepper is pale, and the duster is once more soaked in blood. But he moves with quiet confidence.
“I am sorry about your wife,” he says. “She was a good woman.”
Li looks at the man uncomprehendingly.
“Good woman? Of course she good woman,” he yells in broken English, tears flowing. “What know you of sorrow son of bitch?” He screams. He wants to attack Pepper for cursing him so. He wants to see Pepper dead on the floor with his wife. He wants his wife back. He wants what has been ripped from him. And he is drowning in an empty void.
“My superiors have what they want,” Pepper continues haltingly. “I have to leave and go home.” He opens his duster to expose chewed up skin. Underneath his flat stomach the glint of metal flashes. “I was given orders to leave as soon as possible.”
Li squints his eyes against the early morning light streaming in through the half open door.
“Go home. Never come back.”
He turns back away and shivers as a draught of cold air passes through the room.
“I just wanted to apologize . . . and give you this.” Pepper steps forward and hands Li another thick wad of bills. It is enough to go to America. It is enough for Li to do anything. Li throws the money back at Pepper.
“Keep blood money. I do not want.”
Pepper takes the money and sets it on the small table next to the laptop. He looks around the room one last time, shakes his head, wraps his duster back around himself, then steps through the door, softly shutting it behind him.
Li sits still for another few minutes, then carefully kisses Mei’s forehead and gets up, rubbing at red eyes.
Pepper had left the laptop, with the small black disk sitting by it, behind.
Mei’s grave is a small one dug by the Macau missionaries. Li is not sure what else to do, and the eager white missionaries are thrilled to preach the good news to an ignorant foreigner. Li ignores them, and sets an elaborate bunch of flowers next to the headstone.
Li isn’t stupid. Something grand is happening. The message senders are closer now. He wonders if the Western scientists have gotten Pepper’s data. Someday the messages will stop, and an alien craft will shake the sky, part the clouds, and land in Canton.
Pepper is no longer seen on the Wharf docks. And Li no longer sells fish. He has enough money to live well in Macau for the rest of his life. Pepper’s gift is generous.
On the deck of a large old ship that stinks of diesel fumes, Li leaves Macau. Another peasant on the deck, another hoping for a new life. He ignores the crates of loud fowl, the grubby smiling kid with the caged cricket, and the old lady who loudly farts on the bench across from him. He braces himself against the heavy sea, letting the salt blow away the fish smell, looking back at the distant shore.
Two weeks later, on the shore of a small beach in California, Li tosses a small black disk into the water, careful to not let it prick him, and then drops a single Hibiscus in after it.
Li heard that, earlier, that Western scientists are in Canton, the Chinese government finally admitting the existence of its message. Pepper’s work is done.
And today in Canton, everyone repeats with wonder, the scientists looked upwards at the sky in wonder as a sleek shining alien craft slowed to a gentle stop between the massive radio dishes.
Maybe they will bring an order to the chaotic world, Li thinks, or change the world in other, fairer ways. He wants to meet the distant entities, and tell them how important his Mei was to their historic event. But for now . . .
“Farewell, Mei,” Li says.
Then he turns to walk back up the beach, smiling at the children screeching and running through the cold surf.
First published in Science Fiction Age, March 2000.
About the Author
Born in the Caribbean, Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling author. His novels and over fifty stories have been translated into eighteen languages. He has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. He currently lives in Ohio.
A Stopped Clock
Madeline Ashby
“They don’t go out to drink anymore,” Jun-seo said. “They get everything delivered these days. That’s the problem.”
“They’re all dieting,” Ha-eun said. “They won’t eat rice. Rice!”
“I could check the flows,” Jun-seo offered.
Ha-eun shook her head. “It’s a trap. Remember when I tried to unsubscribe? They still owe me money. Besides, the prediction was never that good anyway.”
“But we’d know where the kids are going,” Jun-seo said. “We’d see them on the maps. Their pings. From their watches.”
Again, she shook her head. The flows were valuable, in theory, but, in practice, they never tended to have the information a food vendor really needed. Sure, they were great for seeing things
like traffic density, like how many people were taking what train at what time, and what train might be best for getting home at what time of night, but to get granular data with actual demographic information, that cost too much.
“They’re not going anywhere,” she said. “They’re just going online.”
The two of them sipped from thready cups of coffee. Jun-seo had a 2-for-1 print credit back when the machine first un-shuttered itself. It would be better, he said, than taking the monthly penalty on getting coffee in cans or pouches from the other machines. They all saw you, these days. Saw you and judged you, rolling their machine eyes like mountain aunties, then reaching into your pocket to punish you for buying things that eventually became trash. Ha-eun ran her tongue over the cup’s rough lip. It felt like kissing a cat. Soon, she would be able to bite through the cup itself. Had it really been that long? Had they really worked this same corner for all that time?
“Maybe if we sold waffles,” Jun-seo said. “Waffles are still going strong.”
“You can’t sell ice cream in winter.”
Jun-seo flinched, but said nothing. Ha-eun felt sorry immediately, but had no idea how to apologize. She opened her mouth to say something nice about the coffee instead, but as she did, the building across the street blinked out.
“Eh?” She reached out and tapped Jun-seo. “Oi. Look.”
“I see it.” He scowled. “They’re not supposed to do that.”
Ha-eun checked her watch. No alerts. No warnings about bad weather or a brownout. Across the street, the solar louvers fluttered back to factory default. Their creaks and snaps carried clearly through the crisp winter air. The building, all sixty or so stories, stood out black against the city lights like a massive door into darkness itself. For a moment Ha-eun had the terrible thought that something might actually come out of that door. Some awful titan from legend curling its fingers around the biocrete, or a dragon swimming out of the sudden shadow. She blinked hard and rubbed her eyes. Goodness, she really was getting old.
The building flickered back on. The louvers snapped back to their nighttime positions. In the awakening light, she saw a few chilly residents standing on their balconies, peering at each other. They looked around, looked up and down, and then hurried inside.
